Harry Potter and the Show Trials: A Nightmare
by somewhere-quiet
Summary: Kingsley Shacklebolt, the new Minister of Magic, cooperates with living Lord Voldemort and takes direction from the cunning, capable Dolores Umbridge to purge the Ministry and the Wizarding world of roving Death Eaters. Post-DH & somewhat AU.


Disclaimer: I hereby acknowledge that J. K Rowling, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury and Scholastic Books, and other persons and companies own Harry Potter. I make no money from this endeavor, nor do I intend to infringe on any copyrights for any work ever published. Like I could ever come up with anything that good. Pssht.

Notes: I wrote this in a rush and had to fix it. So it's longer now.

-s-

After killing Remus Lupin—with an internal cutting curse of his own invention—Antonin Dolohov leapt over an upturned House table and landed heavily on his hands and knees. The Great Hall reverberated with the cacophony of shouts, oaths, and incantations; Dolohov cast a Silencing Charm around himself to muffle the deafening noise. He edged carefully alongside of the table, glancing over its side occasionally as he made several complicated motions with his wand at the stone walls, weakening the far-off magical wards wrapped around the castle.

His instructions had been explicit. Once the Dark Lord entered the castle, he was to kill one member of the Order of the Phoenix, break a brief hole in the wards, and—flee.

"Flee?" Dolohov had asked blankly, earlier that night in the forest, when Lord Voldemort took each Death Eater aside to give them specific directions.

"Flee," Voldemort had said simply. "Do you not trust me, Antonin? To trust is to obey."

And so Dolohov, trusting, found himself crouching behind a table like a child while the whole war raged around him. He did not permit himself to feel baffled by the instructions; confusion rotted into doubt too easily. An explanation would occur to him soon enough. Instead, he closed his eyes and continued to picture diagrams and equations made fresh in his mind by memory-enhancing charms. Wards, he knew, could be broken with blunt force, either by hurling dense materials through them, such as boulders or iron objects, or by forcing another person or being through them to be scorched by the brunt of their power before taking advantage of the following momentary lapse to escape. Death Eaters thoroughly enjoyed shoving trains of captured Muggles through the wards around guarded manors to see which one survived longer than all the others.

Any material, living or dead, would do for now. But the wards, especially the extraordinarily powerful ones around Hogwarts, had to be weakened and battered before he could run. No, flee, his lord had said; to merely run would not be enough. Dolohov pressed a shaking hand against his eyes. Flee? How well his master knew him. All his life, he looked to evade painful consequences, and as he grew and his management of his magic became more precise, he began to eliminate physical pain from his life altogether.

Even his curses reflected this obsession. His cutting curse killed almost painlessly if used properly; if nothing interfered with its casting, it would slice through the ribs and shred the heart instantaneously. One of Harry Potter's little friends, the bushy-haired girl, had cast a Silencing Charm on him during their scuffle in the Department of Mysteries, and he had cut her, that was true, but she survived the wordless spell and she surely endured a long and painful stay in the hospital wing. Who was lucky, Dolohov wondered; the ones who died quickly, or those who lived and suffered? He absentmindedly traced an X in the air, fancying he could cross out pain as well as another life as easily as making a mark on parchment.

"_REDUCTO!"_ a man bellowed close to Dolohov's left shoulder, and the explosive curse hurtled past, ripping through a sizeable chunk of the table. Dolohov burst into a sprint from his crouched position, forgetting that the wards were still in place as he ran from his doubt and from the faceless shout, knocking other combatants to the side with rough shoves and swipes of unspoken spells, slipping dangerously on the bloody stones. The broken castle walls flashed past his peripheral vision and soon cool grass was underfoot, more slippery than the stones. The vision of the whole beautiful field glimmering in the sunrise contrasted fearfully with the deafening, brutal well of noise behind him. He slowed and began picking up rocks and sticks, tossing them a few meters in front of him, looking for a sizzle, a hiss, a sudden haze to signal the presence of a functioning ward.

He threw a broken branch, and as it spun through the air, it abruptly caught fire and tumbled to the ground. Several birds, startled by the sudden blaze, flew away in fear. Dolohov pointed his wand at the center of the flock and bellowed, "_Accio bird!"_

He caught the sparrow in his left hand as if it were an awkwardly pitched ball. The little bird gave an ear-piercing trill of mortal fear, and Dolohov, momentarily fascinated, felt its tiny spine with his thumb, turning it over in his hand to see its startlingly red and yellow mouth. The other birds, hearing its cry, had swerved back, screaming warnings at the man who disrupted their flight. Dolohov swung back his left arm and chucked the sparrow towards the invisible ward's wall, casting a Banishing Charm as soon as it left his hand. The bird flapped its wings wildly as it sailed in an unnaturally straight line, and for a moment, Dolohov thought it would simply break free of his range and twirl away into the sky. But again, the bird passed the invisible line; it too burst into flame and spun in fearful cartwheels until it crashed into the ground.

"That was needlessly cruel," said a familiar, droll voice behind Dolohov. He turned to see burly Walden Macnair strolling peaceably towards him, his beard looking burnt and his face bruised, but none worse for the wear.

"Coming from an executioner, that's a bit much," said Dolohov, turning.

"A good hangman doesn't let his…erm, quarry suffer," Macnair said. He paused while Dolohov put his hands on his knees, breathing deeply to regain his wind.

"What did the Dark Lord command you to do?" Dolohov asked, looking up.

"Hide," Macnair shrugged.

"I wonder whom he told to seek," Dolohov said, still panting, looking slightly mutinous.

"Who knows. But Bella's dead. Molly Weasley killed her in a duel after Bella nearly cut down her daughter," Macnair sighed, kicking the grass idly.

"Molly? I killed her brothers," Dolohov said absently.

"Harry Potter's alive," Macnair said before Dolohov could remark upon Bella's death. They looked at each other. Dolohov straightened up slowly, staring at the castle. The curious sense of finality that had hung over everyone on the castle grounds seemed to sink into both of them, rooting them to the spot.

"We need to leave. Anything can happen now—even if our master can't die—but—" Dolohov ran a hand up his left arm, feeling the callous of the Dark Mark, stopping mid-sentence. "If Harry Potter is alive," he continued, "then the safest thing we can do is obey. 'To trust—'"

"'—is to obey,'" finished Macnair tiredly. "Yes, I know. But…" Dolohov merely looked at him. Macnair continued, hesitant. "You know, since I was Marked by the Dark Lord, I've always felt a little stranger." He faltered, looking openly at Dolohov, who raised his eyebrows. "Those are the only ways I can describe it. Something happened and I'm _different—_"

"Killing makes you different," snapped Dolohov. "Killing kills you. Parts of you are dead and now you want them back. Too late." He kicked the ground and turned around. "We need to leave, and leave now."

"No need to be so short," said Macnair, striding forward through the tall grass, "Let's go. You run. I'll hide. _Protego_!"

He cast a powerful Shield Charm around Dolohov, and Dolohov ran through the ward, feeling its heat slap against the charm like molten magma. The heat was all-consuming, so much so that Dolohov felt his very thoughts were aflame. He and a few others knew that such a thing as Horcruxes existed, how they could be made, and that the Dark Lord had made several. How many, none of them knew, though Dolohov suspected six. He knew of only one for certain: himself. Macnair, since he had received similar instructions, was almost certainly one as well. Dolohov kept running though the wall of heat, his hand straying unconsciously to his left arm, feeling the seal that bound a part of Lord Voldemort's soul to his own.

-s-

The castle was in utter disarray—the House tables were thrown on their sides; walls and staircases had been toppled; the wounded groaned but some smiled painfully, the ecstatic, wild feeling of relief sweeping over the barely living and the healthy alike. A barn owl rose and dipped above the crowd, the morning sunlight trimming the edges of its pale wings with a glowing shade of gold. It landed unsteadily on a window ledge and dropped a sealed letter on the floor, startling a tall, bald black wizard. He picked up the envelope, reading the name that was written on it in neat script. His name.

Stepping behind a broken pile of stones, Kingsley Shacklebolt read through the letter rapidly. Fragments of phrases dimly registered in his mind. Line of succession. No other available candidates. Minister of Magic. Temporary. Pending.

Minister of Magic.

Kinsley's heart pounded. He continued to stare blindly at the letter.

"Kingsley? _Kingsley!_"

Arthur Weasley pushed through the crowd, holding a piece of parchment in his hand. "Kingsley, you're the new Minister—you have to be sworn in. Straight away. Minister of Magic! Blimey, Kingsley, I…" He stopped by Kingsley's side, regarding at the stunned Auror with amusement.

"Well…how do you feel?" Arthur asked, his smile wan and strained, momentary excitement drained away by the reality of the situation.

"I—I…glad," Kingsley stuttered. He had felt the same joy as an eleven-year-old boy after reading the Hogwarts letter. He had received that letter in his home and had come to Hogwarts. Now, he received a similar letter here in Hogwarts, and then, from here, he would ascend to a higher step—_the_ highest step. But what lay before him frightened him. The broken wizarding world was torn and bloody, with old feuds between families still raging, Death Eaters still roaming the towns, and the magical government almost completely discredited and destroyed.

"Actually…absolutely and numbly horrified," he said slowly. Arthur laughed, clapping him on the shoulder.

"But—what the hell, Arthur? I botched the hunt for Sirius so badly, they sent me to work for the Muggle Prime Minister!" Kingsley said in sudden frustration, hand on his forehead. "They had me file papers. I didn't use magic. Whoever the secretary was before me was a real idiot, because nothing was organized and no one knew—shit. Shit. How am I supposed to handle this? What the hell do I do? I have no—"

"Well, Minister, before you swear at your subordinates anymore," Arthur said drily, "you need to be sworn in."

-s -

The inauguration ceremony took place outside the castle, beside the lake. Those who gathered squinted in the blazing noon sunlight, pulling the brims of their hats low over their eyes. The dark, broad figure of Kingsley stood in sharp contrast to the blinding sheen of light reflecting off the lake's surface.

Reporters from the _Daily Prophet_ began to gather at the castle, drawn like flies to carrion. Kingsley surveyed them with intense dislike as he stood by the lake, hands clasped in front of him. He expected nothing more than feeble, pusillanimous support of his new administration from the newspaper. The coming months, he knew, would bring him obliquely snippy headlines and stories that would question his policies, hiring practices, judicial philosophy, and mental stability.

Arthur walked through the growing gaggle of reporters and spectators, holding a large object in his hands. Baffled, Kingsley squinted at him. Someone stepped in front of Arthur, holding a quill like a pin. Words were exchanged; Arthur's expression was politely contemptuous. Finally he forced his way past the man and walked up to Kingsley.

"We don't have much in the way of sacred books," he said. "Some Muggles like to lay their hands on books and say a pledge, as I understand it…but, erm, I brought _this_—" He held up a heavy, stained chunk of a stone wall to Kingsley's eye level.

"Is this… Oh, Lord, it's blood," Kingsley muttered, turning the stone over in his hands with difficulty, feeling slightly sick. Arthur looked on grimly, then said, "Lay your hand on top of it."

The reporters, who had been chattering amongst themselves, turned to look at Kingsley and Arthur. A hush fell over the crowd. One reporter, a man with a dim expression and an overbite, held an ungainly camera upon his shoulder. Beside him, a blonde witch pursued her lips and rolled a green quill in her fingertips.

"Well, Kingsley Shacklebolt, do you hereby assume the office of the Minister of Magic and all of its responsibilities, privileges, and headaches?"

"I do," said Kingsley, amused.

"That's that, then," Arthur said briskly. Kingsley let go of the stone. It fell too close to Arthur's toes; he jumped and looked at Kingsley reproachfully, then chuckled.

"Thank you," said Kingsley. Arthur smiled tiredly.

The crowd advanced before Kingsley could collect his thoughts. Someone rudely grabbed his arm; he pulled away without looking. They would not leave him alone. How did the other Ministers _deal_ with this? he wondered wildly as he plowed through the gabbling crowd. Fudge had affected an annoyed air at insistent questions, pretending to huff as reporters tailed him, but he answered everyone, unable to suppress the paternal smile he had acquired during his long tenure as Minister. Scrimgeour frequently strode away from particularly pushy reporters mid-conversation; he waded into the crowds, pointing at those he permitted to ask questions and barking answers over their heads.

Dumbledore, he remembered, handled the newsmen's harassment in his own eccentric manner. He would speak in extended metaphors, say a few odd words, or drift off in the beginning of the questioning, mumbling to himself. While the last option may do harm to his fragile reputation, Kingsley thought, he could certainly try the first. It might permit him a curious air of certainty and mystery that would hopefully excuse initial indecision.

"Do you have any idea," asked one anxious reporter, bobbing up and down in the crowd, "where you are going? What your policy will be? How you expect—"

"Yes," said Kingsley abruptly, snapping out of his reverie. "I am going to sever the serpent's legs and make him crawl on his belly." The most powerful Death Eaters needed to be caught first, he thought. Taking them off the streets would mortally weaken their little cult. The weaker ones would slip into oblivion to evade similar capture, and they could be arrested on normal criminal charges if they acted again.

There was an uncomprehending pause at this odd pronouncement. Some percipient fellow yelled, "So you don't have a real plan?"

"A bad plan is better than no plan," Kingsley called back.

"Mr. Minister, your words imply deep conviction," the reporter continued, walking alongside him. "But, put simply, what will be your first course of action as the new Minister of Magic?"

Kingsley stopped and turned. "First, I will cut out the serpent's tongue." This time, murmurs broke the confused pause, but Kingsley continued in a shout, "Any reporter from the Daily Prophet or any of its subsidiary magazine chains caught propagating or sympathizing with any Death Eater and his ideals will removed from his post after a brief inquiry. If a removed reporter continues to publicly exhort these ideals," Kingsley continued to shout, "he will—he'll be hunted."

"Hunted by whom?" another reporter yelled.

"By…by all the King's dogs, of course," Kingsley replied, his expression flickering into a smile. Titters rippled through the crowd, some nervous, some satisfied and appreciative. They knew this game. This was Dumbledore's favorite tactic. Some of the reporters glanced at one another tensely. A few of the Prophet's reporters had noticeably leaned towards the darker side of the war in their stories and editorials in the past few months as a matter of cynical expedience, if not outright sympathy.

"So you're putting together a team," said a tall man nearby.

"I'm assembling a special force that will report to me, and me alone—a subset of the Auror's office, if you will," Kingsley continued loudly, only half realizing that he was waving his arms now. "We will track and capture the fleeing and hiding Death Eaters. Now—no, no more questions, I must go—"

"'We'?" yelled a woman in alarm, holding her quill high. "Minister, are you going to _personally_ join the hunt? We can hardly afford—"

"I have—I have an appointment," Kingsley said to the crowd. They stopped following him, faces madly curious but respectful. Maybe they would not give him hell. "I need to contact the first of my…er, appointees."

The urgency of the situation pressed upon Kingsley. He did have a plan. He needed to go to Azkaban.

-s-

Kingsley misjudged the original contours of the shoreline and plunged into chilly, waist-deep waters after Apparating outside the school's grounds. He surfaced with a gasp, staggering on slimy stones underfoot. Apparently Azkaban had been attacked several times in the past year. Enormous chunks of the walls had crumbled into the sea or vanished altogether. As he drew closer, he could see scorch marks and charcoal streaks spelling out vandals' names and other obscene messages. Mixed in with these were scornful slogans mocking the Second War.

A growing portion of the wizarding world refused to enter a conflict they considered to be exclusively between two deranged individuals. Many of them felt pity for The Boy Who Lived, but the feeling wore thin after the years. The subsequent, convoluted image crisis Harry went through only exasperated them further. Few felt the same ambivalence towards the Death Eaters and Voldemort, but rather than feeling compelled to fight, they considered fleeing the jurisdiction of the increasingly menacing Ministry and its painful wartime taxes. The scribbles on the memorial in Godric's Hollow had begun to fade and few fresh messages replaced them the last time Kingsley visited the memorial the past fall.

Cold waves slapped the short walls of shale. Kingsley pulled himself stiffly out of the water and sat down on a dry ledge. No dementors, so far as he could tell. This was a perfectly natural cold. The prison was abandoned. He absentmindedly withdrew the Ministry letter from his robes, staring ahead. Minister of Magic. How extraordinary. The position Dumbledore had refused several times was now incredibly, almost accidently, his.

Power, he thought, corrupts. If this was corruption, it felt like happiness. A kind of glee he had never felt before swelled in his chest; he felt positively buoyed. He was in charge. He would order the reconstruction of Hogwarts, find the remaining Death Eaters and put them on trial, and he would rebuild the wizarding world. He stood up. His exhaustion seemed to be disconnected with the present situation. Nothing could stymie this sensation, the great roaring delight one finds in the sudden inheritance of extraordinary power and privilege. Alone on the ragged stone shore, Kingsley felt invincible.

He unfolded the letter, tearing his eyes away from the horizon. Immediately he let out a groan. Half of the script had been washed away. Most of the parchment looked like a soaked, grey napkin. He had foolishly forgotten to make his belongings impervious to water. The Minister of Magic held the sopping letter in his hand and sighed. Invincible indeed.

A flattened path led to the tall doors of the prison. Kingsley walked carefully up the middle, avoiding the crumbling sides. Once inside the prison, he raised his wand.

"_Expecto Patronum!" _

A large lynx leapt gracefully forward, lighting up the dark entryway. It turned to Kingsley.

"Look for a woman," he said. It blinked and ran smoothly down the labyrinthine passages. Its color looked slightly different, Kingsley thought. A darker silver, yet the animal itself seemed fainter. Was it this feeling of almost heedless, gloating delight that produced a rather less powerful Patronus? Or was the strain of the last battle affecting his powerful spells?

The prison walls echoed no noise. Kingsley held his wand, waiting with wide eyes, listening intently. After ten minutes, a faint glow grew brighter. The transparent lynx padded back to its master, mewing silently. Kingsley gazed coldly at the short, stoat woman illuminated by the lynx's light.

"My dear Kingsley, wherever have you been?"

Dolores Umbridge emerged from the broken doorway, holding a white handkerchief in her stubby left hand, wand at her side.

-s-

"I recognized your Patronus right away. Didn't Dumbledore teach you how to make it talk? You should have made it speak to me! I might have been frightened out of my mind—it's lucky I taught you the charm in the first place; never would I ever have recovered from the shock if I didn't know it was you. I knew that someone had come to hunt me down after that 'High Inquisitor' debacle and the half-blood screenings, but you're the last person I'd expect to kill me—oh, don't you raise your eyebrows at me, Kingsley. That little Potter brat would have killed me as soon as looked at me."

"Madame Umbridge—" Kingsley began firmly.

"Kingsley, I am no longer your superior. You will call me Dolores."

"Dolores," he sighed, "'that little Potter brat' _killed_ Voldemort just this morning—" Umbridge cleared her throat at the name, not registering the news; Kingsley pressed on. "Furthermore, I am _not_ here to kill you or arrest you. I'm here to offer your job back. As the new Minister of Magic, I want to reinstate you as the Senior Undersecretary to Ministry."

Umbridge did not answer immediately. She looked down at her folded hands, studying the thick rings. "So he's dead. And Potter's alive. Potter won."

"_We_ won," Kingsley said insistently, slightly miffed that she didn't congratulate him on his ascension to the office.

"Yes. It's over. It's really… It's really over," Umbridge murmured more to herself than Kingsley.

They had walked back through the passageway the lynx had followed, back to the rooms Umbridge had made into a makeshift home. "I lost my house, you see, after I refused to process half-bloods after I was attacked," she had chattered. "Yes—I was attacked! I quit straightaway. Cornelius was not there to protect me anymore. Anyway, the Ministry suddenly declared it 'uninhabitable,' and I had two hours to clear out my things. This was the safest place I could find. You're a smart boy, Kingsley; I knew you'd find me. Sit, sit!" she had said, indicating a sturdy table.

Kingsley had sat and looked around. She had salvaged some of her old decorations from her small house; the same delicate pink scarves and cloths were pinned to the stone walls with Sticking Charms, and the familiar plates depicting kittens were set neatly upon jutting ledges. Umbridge herself was smiling, but her clothes were worn and patched; her thin hair was wrapped neatly in a lank braid that was striped with streaks of grey. It was also clear that she had lost an unhealthy amount of weight.

"So will you take back your job?" Kingsley pressed as Umbridge fussed with a torn collar of her robes.

"Kingsley, dear, do have some sense. The Potter brigade would never stand for it. And I—" A slow smile spread across her wide face. "Oh, my, I would ruffle some feathers, wouldn't I? Well…"

"Why do you so loathe Harry?" Kingsley asked, exasperated already. Unsurprisingly, she was going to give him migraines whether or not she chose to take back her job.

"Potter had no right to disrupt our fragile peace!" Umbridge snapped, slapping her hand on the table. "Whom does he think he is—a brooding, roaming vigilante who nobly carries the burden of stopping a murderous madman all alone, by his own tragically heroic efforts? Oh, yes, only he understands what it's like to lose loved ones. He doesn't understand a bit. He never saw his own children die."

"He saw men maimed and friends murdered. He was marked for death when he was a _baby_," Kingsley said, patient. "Dolores—"

"But he never had children," Umbridge interrupted fiercely. "There's a difference, Kingsley. Only a mother could understand." The heavy lines around her eyes make her look much older than her fifty-odd years.

Kingsley frowned. He hadn't meant to remind her of her long-deceased daughter. The last time she had told him the story of her husband had killed the girl and then himself to "protect" the family from Death Eaters during the first war, she had sobbed for an hour afterwards. He sighed deeply and laid his hands on the table in a gesture of openness. "I'm not here to talk about who's experience of death and torture was 'better.' Will you please serve the Ministry once more as my undersecretary? I _will_ protect you. And I need your help managing the Ministry while we capture Death Eaters and put them on trial."

"And who am I to refuse admittance to a few good show trials?" Umbridge tittered. "Yes… Yes, I'll come back. I want my house back."

"Done," Kingsley said promptly, before she could say any more. He shook her hand and rose from his seat. "Collect your belongings, Dolores. We're going back to London."


End file.
